ARES:Gods of War

Fighting Forward

After the storm had passed, the Spartans had sallied forth, managing to break the crew out from the underground of the AO. Chief and Sam pushed together alongside Ludmilla, with the lead Spartan(eldest of the pair) pushing his way past a pair of Raptures while dropping grenades at their feet. Alice's sniper rang out, taking out another that was right beside him.

Chief utilized the thrusters in his armor to propel himself forward, cocking his fist back and striking the leg of a Thermite. That threw off its aim, sending two bolts of plasma flying skyward instead of at him, Sam or Ludmilla. Ludmilla herself followed up by clambering on top of the machine and kicking its armor plate until it collapsed. She shoved the barrels of her weapon in the opening and opened fire, hot spent casings flying out of the ejection port as the high-cal Nikke-standard rounds tore through.

The machine's sole green eye dimmed, then went dark. Multiple of its kin returned fire, forcing Ludmilla to move faster while also keeping up with the Spartans. Sam, meanwhile, pulled his pistol out and snapped off several shots at the machines, nailing a couple and causing them to fall over. Beside him, Ludmilla pushed forward again, hefting her MG and opening up. Twin bursts of bullets raked another machine's body, only for her to feel the full brunt of another slamming into her.

She flew into a pile of snow with a huff, then murmured, "Damnable Kamikaze drones..." as she stood up. She gasped as a second burst through from behind the corpse of a larger brother and prepared to roll to the side. She paused, however, when a blade of energy split the machine in half, then again. The four bits of the beast fell to the floor as a highly-advanced Nikke touched down and spotted the Commander, Chief and Sam.

She smirked behind her mouthpiece and radioed, "Counters, Luckies! Good news! Commanders have been found!"

"Roger! We're on our way to you!" Rapi's voice echoed over the com, followed up by a sigh of relief from Shifty. The Spartans and Alyosha greeted the flying Nikke with nods and a smile, respectively, while Alice let out an awed 'woah' at the sight. Rusty swiveled about and drew her assault weapon, firing a burst at a missile launcher Rapture before dodging its rockets.

Chief and the others turned and focused fire, with the Commander radioing, "Alice, hit them!"

She smiled, "Roger, Rabbity! Go down!" then snapped off several shots. Her rifle's semi-automatic setting helped deliver a volley of fire on the smaller Raptures that attacked the Spartans while they themselves shot back. Each bullet struck true, staggering or killing one of the machine-beasts while the two supersoldiers laid waste to the rest. Still, even with that, Chief's armor's integrity was going down.

"We're down to around 67 percent, Chief... Maybe we should disengage and let Sam handle it for now..." Cortana murmured as flakes started peeling from the Titanium layer alongside the paint, revealing a dark-grey coat underneath. Chief sighed and nodded, noting some warnings that were blaring before taking a step back. Cortana told Sam, "Keep yourself mobile and watch out for the enemy's beams, Sam. The focused particle emissions will chew through your titanium plating."

"Roger!" Sam replied, rolling off to the side as a burst of energy struck right beside him. Chief pulled extra magazines from his belt and pouches and threw them to the Spartan, who caught them and slotted them in place of his empty ones. Chief sighed as he walked to Doctor Halsey's side. The woman stopped him and started looking over his armor and clicked her tongue, disappointed.

"I knew I should've added extensive radiation shielding..." She murmured to herself, scraping a bit of the fused materiel with her fingers and looking at it. She cleaned it off on the snow, then told John, "I'm afraid that, at the current extent of damage to your armor's titanium protection layer, you're heading for an untimely demise, John. Wait until I can either fix this, or until I get you new armor parts..."